They reckon the governmental budget is like a household budget.
They reckon ‘tough love’ is the way to motivate beneficiaries.
They think boot camps are going to fix young offenders.
They reckon the clean car discount didn’t actually work.
They reckon world-leading smokefree legislation wasn’t going to work.
They reckon Three Waters co-governance was anti-democratic.
These are the reckons you produce when you don’t actually know what you’re on about. These are reckons that get embarrassed by the most basic research. These, of course, are reckons most loudly voiced by idiot racists and arrogant populists.
Either the new government are proudly sharing these genuine reckons because they are that stupid; or they are cynically sharing their pretend reckons because they are eager for the support of bigoted fools. (There is no shortage of reckon-happy voices in the media who will be happy to protect this government from the consequences of its failures.)
Either way, they must think it doesn’t matter whether or not they are wrong, and who will be hurt as a result. They don’t care about families doing it tough, or people on a benefit, or anyone hurt by youth offending, or meeting climate change targets, or reducing smoking in communities, or the nature of democratic participation, or the importance of the Treaty at the heart of this nation.
This is easily the most embarrassing and pathetic and inadequate and unserious government this country has endured in my lifetime. Probably for generations before that as well.
Bunch of eggs, the lot of them.
Yeah, I have a lot of problems with “evidence-based” policy, but whatever these people are up to it’s like the complete opposite. Evidence-free.